


in case we don't live forever

by the_chaotic_lesbian



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Angst, Fire Emblem: Three Houses Blue Lions Route, Unhappy Ending, battle of fort merceus
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-10
Updated: 2020-08-10
Packaged: 2021-03-06 00:35:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,169
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25824490
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/the_chaotic_lesbian/pseuds/the_chaotic_lesbian
Summary: The reality of war doesn’t really hit Ashe until Fort Merceus.
Relationships: Annette Fantine Dominic & Ashe Duran | Ashe Ubert, Caspar von Bergliez & Ashe Duran | Ashe Ubert, Caspar von Bergliez/Linhardt von Hevring
Comments: 3
Kudos: 22





	in case we don't live forever

**Author's Note:**

> I have a million other things to write but the idea wouldn't leave me alone and I had to write it to release the brainworms. I am terribly sorry in advance.

The reality of war doesn’t really hit Ashe until Fort Merceus. 

He doesn’t know why he’s fighting. Well, that’s a lie, mostly: he’s fighting for his friends and the people he cares about. On the battlefield, he takes position next to cheerful Annette, who smiles at him even when she’s firing off one magic attack or another. Mercedes has them both under her watchful eye, even as she provides healing to Sylvain and Ingrid, their cavalry units. Dimitri and the professor charge forward with Dedue and Felix hot on their heels. 

By now, the fighting is familiar, and he’s happy to stand next to the people he can call a family, to protect them. 

It doesn’t hit him until Merceus that not all of his friends stand beside him on the battlefield. 

Fort Merceus is supposed to be impregnable, and yet the professor insists that they take it, says it’s the only way to gain entry into Enbarr and stop this horrible war. After the victory at Grondor Field, this feels only natural. 

Annette is the one who tells Ashe who exactly waits for them at the fort. 

“Dimitri says it’s Caspar and Linhardt,” she confesses, late at night when they’re studying together. “I knew them both. Linhardt is the worst person I’ve ever met, but Caspar was always so nice to me.” 

“I knew Caspar too,” Ashe says, quietly, “we bickered and bickered, but he’s the most honest person I’ve ever met.” 

Annette shivers, staring forward at her book. “Do you think we’re gonna have to… you know, kill them?” 

“We can always try not to,” Ashe tells her, and he tentatively wraps an arm around her shoulders, “who knows, maybe we can even convince him to join us.” 

“Maybe.” 

In the quiet of the night, it’s easy to forget that old friends and former classmates are now enemies, that suggesting they could be anything else is wishful thinking. It’s been five years; if any of the former Black Eagles were going to magically switch sides, they would’ve done so already. 

Caspar and Linhardt aren’t even the biggest threat to them, the next day when they begin their assault on the fort. The Death Knight stands in the center, directing the armies, and the former Black Eagles are almost an afterthought, like they were stationed there because there was nowhere else for them to go. 

(And maybe there wasn’t. Maybe they were there to avoid fighting. A place to make Caspar feel useful while Linhardt got his wish of never having to shed blood.) 

Ashe loses track of most everything whenever the battle begins. The fort is a complicated, winding tunnel, and whenever he’s separated from the rest of the Blue Lions, he can feel the pressure of those walls bearing down on him. There’s not as many enemies this path, but he’s on edge, as tense as the string of his bow, shoulders hunched in on himself.

And when he spies movement out of the corner of his eye, he doesn’t hesitate to shoot. 

He sees the flash of green after. 

When they were in school, Ashe was almost envious of Linhardt. He was close to Caspar, and he had a claim on the library after hours nearly every night, which was an admirable fact. He never spoke to Linhardt the way that Annette had, and he doesn’t think any of his classmates had either; Linhardt was a mystery, an enigma. 

And now, Linhardt has an arrow in his chest, his eyes wide and panicked.

Ashe stares at him, gets a better look. He has no weapons on him, but Annette never carries any weapons on her, and neither does Mercedes. Even then, he had cast no spell towards Ashe, hadn’t even called out when Ashe shot him. 

Linhardt blinks, slowly, and then collapses against the wall. His chest is soaked in red, and Ashe had heard a rumor long ago that the Black Eagles’s healer had an aversion to blood, so maybe that’s why the man looks so dizzy, so nauseous. 

Or maybe it’s because he’s dying. 

“I’m sorry,” Ashe says, as quietly as he can manage.

If Linhardt hears, he doesn’t acknowledge the words. Instead, he presses a hand to the arrow wound, winces, and then gags at the sight of his own blood. 

He murmurs something - something that Ashe doesn’t quite catch - and then his eyes close, his chest stilling. 

Ashe releases a shaky breath. He turns to leave. 

“Linhardt!” 

Caspar. 

Ashe has barely gotten two feet away from where he was standing when the blue-haired brawler comes barreling from one of the corridors, only slowing down at the sight of Linhardt slumped against the wall. 

“Linhardt, Lin, come on, wake up!” Caspar sounds pained and desperate. “No, no no no, you can’t… we promised!” 

_ Promises are a foolish thing to make in war,  _ Ashe’s traitorous brain thinks. 

He can’t stay here. Not with the sounds of Caspar’s tears, growing louder and more violent as he sobs for the loss. Ashe grits his teeth, and begins to walk again.

He hears the whoosh of a blade, and turns just in time to dodge the swing of an axe, and Caspar falters. 

“Ashe?” He sounds horrified. Ashe supposes that he’s come to the realization that an archer killed Linhardt and an archer is right here, far too close to the death. 

He tightens his grip on his bow. “Caspar.” 

“You…” Caspar’s gaze flits from Ashe’s face to Linhardt and then back again. “How could you? He… he was… he was a healer. He wouldn’t have attacked you!” 

“This is war, Caspar.” Ashe nocks an arrow, sighs. “And I have my orders, just as you have yours.” 

Caspar stares at him for a moment longer. Surely, he must hear the challenge in Ashe’s words, he’s never been one to step away from a fight. 

And yet… 

“Just kill me.” 

Ashe blinks. “What?” 

Caspar turns, walks back over to Linhardt’s body. He sits, pulls Linhardt into his lap, buries his nose in green hair. 

“Go ahead,” he says, blankly, quietly, his voice all strained like he’s trying not to cry anymore. “We promised… we were gonna get married, did you know that?” He closes his eyes, inhales. “I can’t… I can’t do this without him. So go ahead. Please, Ashe.” 

“Caspar, I…” Ashe swallows. “I’m sorry.” 

And he lets the arrow fly. 

Caspar slumps over Linhardt, and the two of them almost look peaceful, together. It’s almost romantic, the thought of dying hand in hand with your partner, felled by the same person. 

Annette finds Ashe later. 

The Death Knight was hard to find, hard to fight, but he had been forced to retreat, and now they could leave, just like that. Fort Merceus had fallen. They had  _ won. _

But Ashe goes back to the monastery, he sees the cat that he and Caspar had chased around, he steps in the library that he often found Linhardt frequently and he remembers. 

War is a cruel, cruel time. 


End file.
